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"I like this one more..." he whispers. His voice is corse with age, madness, and plain old rough tension-- and yet that blankets his amusement. If I am like fire and ice, and the on-coming storm, I think, he is like cruelty and passion, like greatness and cowardice, and a whole heaven weighing on one's back like old Atlus. Yes, that's it...
My thoughts are cut off. Well, that's not true. The universe still runs through my head, it's more like it speeds up, so fast I'm not reading it like usual. A Timelord's heartbeat usually sounds off at four beats, four very even beats, but I may have been experiancing 8 or 12 consecutively. It was excitement too, but predominantly it was... ease. I've never felt so at ease around the Master. It's because I know there is no plot, no danger. There definately will be, given a parting and a short amount of time (I will think up counter-measures to that, of course, given time), but right now we're tangled intimately and absorbing eachother's presance in a way other than adversaries. It's almost like a sappy dream-- the last of our species wallowing together and trying to forget our lonliness.
And apparantly, my new form was to the Master's liking. Less a stream of longing, frailty, and lingering regret, I'm now more like a mixture of of aloofness and cheerfulness, hiding all that rage and disappointment and angst as much as I can. I'm... more like him, showing all that boast and glee while the pain bubbles just barely under the surface. It must be why he likes this form. That, and that I'm more... submissive? No... budging. I make allowance. I'm not as stubborn. Not as stubborn as any other "me".
We are lent into each-other, shoulders pressed, foreheads angled together too. He doesn't even blink he's so fixated, glimmering white in his smile, a little bit of madness always showing through.
I can hear his drum. Not the ones in his head, no... those have apparantly been fading with time, he said. This drum is the template of his drums, that heartbeat of a Timelord. In the quiet, the silence of a shut-down TARDIS, we can attune to each-other's sounds. Breaths, heartbeats, the clenching and unclenching of fists...
"Oh, Doctor..." The Master cooed with that signature slight of mock, "I can see how you'd want me to stay with you in this serenity forever. But anything less than everything isn't enough for me.'
A flinch crosses me face. "To me, this could be everything."